I am really excited about XmlHttpRequest being available in the major browsers.

One of the main reasons is that I think it really enables componentization.

Take the example of a portal, with 10 components on the screen. In the past the web application would have to round-trip to the server, and rerender everything. What a waste of time!

Now, with XHR, each component can talk back to the server if it needs too, and the rest of the page stays put.

Ok, more efficient, but is it that big a deal?

I think it is. The real power comes in when you think about having plugged in those 10 components from DIFFERENT SOURCES. That works just fine now, whereas it would be a real PITA as the portal software would have to coordinate everything in the past. Now, each component truly is its own component, and our clients talk directly to its server-side representation.

Dynamator is a simple tool that can be used with any page generation technology to completely separate HTML from server code. Dynamator transforms HTML or XML files into server pages or programs. It can generate JSP, XSL, Velocity, and even plain Java.

Dynamator 1.5 features major performance improvements, syntax validation, a documentation refresh, and a large number of minor enhancements and bug fixes.

It looks similar to XMLC. I am always a fan of technologies which leave the HTML as HTML. This way designers can dink around, viewing something that looks like the real thing without having to go through a round-trip.

Using the id=”x” approach definitely gives you this ability (like XMLC, and Tapestry with its jwcid=”x”).

It is also interesting that you can use Dynamator with many page generation technologies and it is “build-time”.